Saturday, December 4, 2010

In Sickness and in Health

Rather than complain about being sick all day (I'm looking at you Kal) I've decided to be someone productive today. Then I realized I was sick and in no mood to do involved research about occultism and such, so instead I figured I'd talk a little about goth rock.

Goth rock is probably my favorite genre of music, much as I love horror punk and black metal. It's a wonderfully sweet melancholy that isn't overplayed like modern day emo music. And by overplayed, I don't mean "hear it too much on the radio." My problem with music like Linkin Park and Evanescence is that these bands make this music that tries so very hard to sound epic and depressive at the same time, and their subject matter is usually actually just personal relationships and romance songs, things of that nature. These bands (Linkin Park, Evanescence, etc) are writing these songs that have super "epic" soundscapes trying to make their mental break downs about losing their girlfriends/boyfriends/whatever sound like super hard core world shattering events. Which is kind of sad, but I won't get into it. Point is, goth avoids those pitfalls by making them melancholic without dipping into self-pity. It turns the personal angst into an artwork. Rather than screaming at the audience to understand it, goth rock frames those feelings and puts them on display. It captures that essence musically rather than forcibly trying to fit it into a cataclysmic sound scape that more narcissistic "artists" prefer to do. Wait! Bad Damien! You promised not to rant about trite emo bands!

Anywho, figured I'd post some of my favorite goth rock bands. If you know of any, please hit me up with recommendations.